Mad World
by kismet-wayfinder
Summary: After Spencer Reid speaks to an auditorium filled with high school seniors, slightly showing off his profiling prowess on a student volunteer, a girl called Gabe Stohnam finds that she needs to know more about him. It leads her down an unexpected path.
1. Chapter 1

**I don't own Criminal Minds, nor will I make a galleon off of writing this fic. /disclaimer obligation.  
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><p>Gabrielle Stohnam was excited to be excused half an hour earlier than usual from her Calculus class that day. The Senior at Governor Mifflin High had never been either particular fond of math in general, or especially great at Calculus itself, so even if this morning's auditorium assembly was going to be about some boring police folk coming in and running their collective gab off about things she overheard while she played <em>World of Warcraft<em> as her parents watched those criminal investigation shows, she welcomed it. Any and everything in the world beat mathematics.

As she filed down the stairs with her fellow classmates, the tanned skin seventeen year old made sure to smooth down the front of her light blue sweater, not wanting it to bunch up as she tromped down the steep steps. Her slightly coiled curls of dark brown hair bounced slightly with each step, the cascading mane down her back ending in little curley-q's that were tinged with red; a dyeing experiment gone serendipitously right.

"What do you think they're going to talk about?" a fellow senior asked her, as they neared the last of the steps; it was Gabrielle's best friend, Seph Evans. "I hear they might not just be cops, but federal investigators. That'd be kind of cool."

"Yeah, maybe," the brown-eyed girl replied, glancing over to her dark-haired, pale-complected peer. "That'd be better than just plain old, from around here cops, who have nothing better to do than periodically stop every car they see that's driven by a teenager, solely _because_ it's being driven by a teenager."

"Hey, my Dad's just doing his duty, doing that," the grey-eyed young man replied defensively. "You know that, Gabe."

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry, Seph. I'm just still a little peeved about getting that ticket. I was going literally two miles over the speed limit."

Rolling his eyes and not wanting to get into this particular conversation again, the teenager called Seph remained quiet the rest of the way down the stairs and on into the first floor auditorium. Choosing seats next to each other somewhere in the middle of all the rows, Gabrielle and Seph waited to see exactly who was going to speak down on the stage, front and center.

"I hear it's criminal profilers that are going to be speaking," another student, called Kaci said to Seph.

"Who knows?" he replied, before leaning forward slightly in his seat to peer downward as a lone person came through a side door into the auditorium, before stepping up onto the stage and preparing his self before a mic and podium once there. "Who's this guy?"

Amidst much murmuring throughout the auditorium, the person at the mic, whoever he was, didn't say anything right away. Also peering down at him from her seat was Gabrielle, who immediately felt a bit of a heat rise to her face. From his slightly shaggy haircut, to his sweater vest, to his all over geeky appearance, she found him to be quite appealing; yes, he was quite cute, indeed. She smiled slightly as she continued to observe him.

"What's with you?" Seph asked her, before rolling his eyes as he made the connection. "Oh, right, you like unnaturally thin, gangly guys, don't you?"

"Yes, just as much as you like freckle-pocked, bug-eyed girls, Seph."

At this, a rather stung looking Kaci turned around to face the speaker down below, leaving the pair of friends to exchange scathing looks, before returning their attention to the man at the podium as he tapped on the mic, causing a loud, unpleasant sound to filter through the auditorium's speaker system.

"Sorry about the bug-eyed girls comment," Gabe said in a lowered sort of voice as she covered her ears.

"No problem at all," Seph replied, also covering his ears; at any rate, the two of them had been insulting each other for half their lives, why stop now? It was just the way their friendship seemed to work best. Or, at least, Gabe liked to insult him quite often, so he tried to reciprocate. It seemed the natural, yet also strange at the same time, way of things.

"Hello, uhm, hi, yeah. Sorry about that weird microphone noise. I'm your speaker this morning. My name is Spencer Reid, and I am a criminal profiler for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Behavioral Analysis Unit. I, along with others as a group, basically try to break down what makes a killer a killer - what makes a criminal tick. We break it down, and use the information to try and solve cases, and on numerous occasions it has worked quite well, indeed, for us."

Pausing briefly at this, the small-statured young man cleared his throat and arranged some index cards before him, before continuing on. "As I understand it, this high school, Governor Mifflin High, is intending to possibly add an elective class that would serve as a precursor to specialized training one would need to eventually pursue a career such as the one I have."

Mumbles and murmurs met this little announcement, and then Reid continued on once again.

"But I expect that I can't really explain this all too well without giving you a _demonstration_, so, without further ado, I cordially invite any one of you who wishes to volunteer to come right here onto the stage. I will then proceed to tell you any and every little detail about you I can gather, just by asking you a few brief and simple questions. So… who's up for volunteering?"

A few hands scattered throughout the crowded auditorium shot up at once, but it was Gabrielle Stohnam who simply couldn't resist the chance to be on the same stage as the geeky (and, apparently, highly intelligent) man that was going to tell her who she was, detail by detail. "I volunteer! Please pick me!" she called out, and being the only student to vocalize her voluntary state, the man behind the mic and podium bowed his head, before calling back to her, "Come on down here, then. You can be the volunteer."

Grunts and groans of disappointment (as well as a few jeers thrown Gabe's way) could be heard as the girl in blue jeans made her way quickly down the aisle and toward the stage. Soon she was at this Reid guy's side, and her adoration of him was quite apparent to Seph, even from where he remained sat, further back. Smiling at her inability to hide her crush, he shook his head. She was a silly girl sometimes.

"So, may I have your name?" Reid asked the young woman, who stepped forward closer to the mic and answered him in as much of a collected voice as possible, "It's Gabrielle, but, I'm generally just called 'Gabe' by people."

"Right, Gabe, nice to meet you, first and foremost. I'm sure we'll be friends, as long as you don't end up being the next unsub I have to search out."

When no real reaction was received to saying this, Reid turned to the mic to explain exactly what an _unsub_ was, however Gabe beat him to it, quickly addressing the microphone herself as she said, "In case you all weren't aware, an _unsub_ is simply an unknown subject of any given investigation."

Raising his eyebrows, Reid gave a nod of his head, saying to Gabe, "Impressive." Then addressing the school as a whole he added, "She's correct. An unsub - unknown subject - is the criminal we're trying to figure out, in order to find and stop him or her before he or she strikes again. And so I'll begin now with the questions, Gabe, if you're ready."

"I'm ready," she replied, though she still had traces of a blush on her face; his voice, his mannerisms, his praise of her knowledge regarding the term he'd used… it had all made him seem even more attractive to Gabe.

"So tell me, Gabe," Reid began then, his eyes falling upon her as he turned to the side, presumably so that the auditorium audience could watch the impending investigation of their fellow peer. "What do you typically do on say, a weekend?"

"A weekend?" the girl repeated back, mulling it over for a few seconds before answering, "Well, I finish up any extra homework; sometimes I go see a film with my friend Seph. But most of my time is spent playing video games or writing poetry."

"What kind of poetry?" Reid then asked, sounding genuinely interested.

"Er, mostly things that don't make much sense to anyone but me. Personal things, 'bout my emotions and such." Gabe was beginning to think that the cuteness of this cop wasn't worth the potential embarrassment she could bring to herself in front of the whole school.

"And what kind of video games?" he asked next, not commenting on the poetry elaboration.

"Mostly _World of Warcraft_," Gabe answered at once, eliciting a few laughs and calls of acknowledgement from fellow players in the auditorium. "Sometimes other MMORPGs. Sometimes just simple strategy games. But my favorite game isn't really a video game, it's a normal game - Chess."

"Eh, I'm not so great at Chess, personally. Not always, anyway," Reid said to this, before asking, "So, finally, what's your family like? Big? Small? Lots of siblings? Only child? What?"

"I'm an only child," Gabe replied. "It's just me and my parents. We had a pet bird, too, but we lost it a few months ago."

When she said this, the girl noticed that Reid looked at her in kind of a funny way, and she wasn't sure how to take it, but seeing as she didn't say anything odd or bad, maybe he was just feeling sorry that she'd lost her pet. Maybe he felt bad, maybe he was thinking to himself something along the lines of _'I'm so sorry for that girl's loss… I should try to cheer her up.'_ Maybe, just maybe, but even if she never knew really, it didn't matter. He didn't have to say it, after all. She could just read it in his eyes - read the pity he felt for her. _Poor Gabe, losing her bird like that_. Etcetera.

"Well, are you ready to hear my little evaluation?" Reid said to her, breaking her momentary reverie and bringing her back to reality as he spoke.

"Oh, sure," she said with a bit of a shrug. "Go ahead. Analyze me, heh."

Smiling back at her, Reid said, "Certainly. For starters, you're pretty much a loner, seeing as you spend a majority of your time online playing your games; many, if not most, of your closest friends are either Online or were met Online, as also evidenced by you saying you only went to movies with one other friend."

Nodding her head in somewhat of a noncommittal fashion, Gabe figured so far it sounded about right.

"Furthermore," Reid continued on then, giving a curt nod of his own head as he did so. "Being an only child means that you're basically used to either doing everything on your own, being completely independent, or else _having_ most everything done _for_ you, for generally it's either one way or the other for only children in upper-class neighborhoods such as the one you live in."

"Well…" Gabe began in reply, pausing to think about it; she certainly didn't have to do everything herself, seeing as her mother did the cooking and laundry, and things like that, but then again, she didn't want to come off as a spoiled, rich kid who got everything handed to her on a platter whenever she snapped her fingers and asked for it. "I'd say it's a mix of both. My mother does some things, like all moms, am I right? But for the most part, I'm independent. I hold a part time job with a local newspaper office. I'm a proof reader for them. And that's how I get my money to pay for my _World of Warcraft_, and other subscriptions, too, you know."

"Alright, so you're a self-sufficient, yet comfortable to be at home girl who is voluntarily secluded much of the time, spending your free moments with a computer and the Internet, only daring to go to the cinema with a single friend of yours. I'd say you're afraid of something, Gabe."

"Afraid of what?" she replied, somewhat anxiously. "What is there to be afraid of?"

Mulling this over, Reid said to her in a lower, more private tone of voice, "I'm afraid I'm not sure of what exactly yet. So for now…" He then stepped back to the microphone, saying, "Let's just leave it to this old, but still relevant and good answer: _There is nothing to fear but fear itself_. So there you go."

"No," Gabe insisted, not caring that Reid had taken care to speak more lowly to her about it, insinuating he might speak with her about it later on or something; knowing from his body language alone that it was clearly something he felt too private to speak of in front of a crowed, Gabrielle pressed the issue. "I want to know, if you're such a good profiler, what exactly, precisely - to the point - I am so afraid of."

Closing his eyes for a few brief seconds, Reid finally relented, sticking his hands down into his trousers pockets as he said, "I think you are afraid of being abandoned, of not being accepted, of just, all-around not being liked."

Looking a bit embarrassed now for having harassed him for an answer in the first place, Gabe stuttered to try and give an explanation, but Reid himself came to the rescue, adding, "But just because you fear those things does _not_ mean that your fear has any grounds or anchorage in truth. I can also tell by your demeanor and appearance and overall confident smile that you aren't amongst those that shy away from the limelight. You are clearly quite well liked and probably have more acquaintances-ready-to-become-friends than you really realize."

Blushing a bit again, Gabe couldn't conceal her smile as she looked back at Reid. "Do you really mean that?"

Before the B.A.U. member could properly respond, a loud, annoying, whirring sound went off throughout the whole building.

"What is _that_?" Reid asked Gabe, who replied, "School fire drill."

"Nice timing, right?" he replied back to the student, before moving to arrange and pick up his note cards and various other papers. "I guess I'll have to come back and lecture on a different day to say the rest."

"Oh, please do," Gabe answered him, before adding, as a remedy for her overly eager manner, "Er, it was just all so interesting, you know?"

"I'm kind of a busy guy with my job, but I will definitely try to find some more time in my schedule to elaborate to this school about the addition of the new class with a second speaking here," Reid said to her, before watching as the students murmured and lined up and filed out of the auditorium; standard fire drill procedure. "I'll be going now. Nice to have met you, Gabrielle."

"Nice to have met you, too, Spence," the girl replied, recalling his briefly mentioned first name.

Glancing back at her, the profiler gave her a small smile. He wasn't used to be called that. He found he rather liked it. Nodding his head at her, he finally turned and left completely from the building. Glancing down to the ground, Gabe noticed that he'd dropped one of his cards. Kneeling behind the podium and looking at it, she saw it simply outlined a plausible curriculum for such a class as he'd been speaking about. Looking at the card's back, she found a tiny set of initials in the bottom right corner. _SR_, followed by four digits, _1966_.

"Weird," she murmured to herself, figuring at once that this couldn't possibly be Spencer Reid's year of birth, due to his younger appearance. "Wonder what it means."

Slowly rising to her feet, Gabrielle stared on toward the side door of the auditorium, which Reid had long since gone through. She had to know more about him. He had been rather accurate during his profiling of her… up until the very, very end. Why on Earth he'd lied and called her, more or less, quite popular, was beyond her. It didn't seem befitting of his personality to lie like that. She had a feeling that if there hadn't been an audience full of others to mock her for it, then Reid wouldn't have added the nice things there at the end _at all_.

She really liked him, but she didn't like liars, and so Gabe felt that she had to amend this paradox in her mind, before it could trouble her any further.


	2. Chapter 2

"Are you playing that silly game of yours again?"

Rolling her eyes as her focus remained on the screen of her laptop, Gabe stopped herself from sighing, as she knew that'd anger her mother. "_No_, actually. I'm doing some research."

"I have to say, that's a bit of a relief," the woman replied, before returning to watch some Godawful soap opera that involved magic and voodoo, and all sorts of other crazy, illogical things.

"Right…" Gabe said simply in reply, before coming across something on her search page that caught her attention; upon clicking the link she'd found, she came to be looking upon a list of phone numbers, all with different lines and extensions.

"_Hotchner, Aaron - 863.462.1961... Rossi, David - 863.462.1962..."_ she read to herself, before smiling; it was obvious now, wasn't it?

Reaching into her nearby purse, she took an index card from it, before looking once more to its back. Now she had Spencer Reid's number. Her smile growing, she closed down her browser, before clicking on the icon displayed on her Desktop that would take her to her second favorite past time. "_Now_ I'm playing _World of Warcraft_, Mom," she said. "I'm doing a few victory hours, after completing my research."

"Whatever… makes you happy," her mother answered her, before gasping as the character on the television screen began to transform into a vampire, having just been bitten by one.

Still smiling, Gabe replied, "Oh, I am. I definitely am."

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><p>As the last school bell rang the following day, Seph ran up to Gabe, catching up with her just shy of her reaching the door that would lead out onto the school campus. "Wanna go catch a movie tonight?" he asked her.<p>

"Nah, sorry," he answered him. "I have a bit of a … project to do."

"Which class?" he then asked her.

"Oh, I'd say it's in a class all it's own," the brown-eyed girl said, cutting her eyes away from her friend.

"What does _that_ mean?" Seph asked, his curiosity quite piqued as he narrowed his own eyes in her direction.

Not answering this question, Gabe simply hitched her shoulder bag up a bit higher, before turning to take a left as they both reached the edge of the campus grounds. "See you later, Seph."

"See you later…" the confused boy replied, watching with a furrowed brow as his friend walked away from him, before saying to himself, "I'll find out what you're up to sooner or later. _Hmph_."

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><p>Ducking into a phone booth not quite fifteen minutes later, Gabe lifted the reciever from where it hung, before slipping two quarters into the coin slot and dialing a number from memory, saying it aloud as she did so, "Eight-six-three… four-six-two… nineteen-sixty-six."<p>

The list she'd come across the evening before had belonged to the F.B.I's Behavioral Analysis Unit office, and implied ways to best reach the various team members. Upon figuring out at once that the localized unit extension that ended with the same four digits that had been written on the back of the index card would link her to Spencer Reid, she could barely contain her excitement as she waited all that night, then all the following school day, just for the chance after school to head for the city's nearest phone booth, to make the phone call she wanted to make.

By now, the phone had rang three times, and Gabe was waiting with nearly bated breath for the man who'd she first seen precisely a week earlier pick up at the other end of the line. Six rings. Seven. Eight. Nine. Growing impatient by the sixteenth ring, the girl with spiraled hair began to chew at her bottom lip. Why wasn't he picking up?

Twenty-three rings.

Screaming in frustration, Gabe tightened her grasp on the reciever. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-_eight_. "Pick _up_!"

Twenty-nine. _Thirty_.

Slamming the reciever back where it belonged, the enraged young woman kicked at the glass within the phone booth, and found that when it didn't quite hurt that much, that she should kick harder, and do so until there was an ache in her toes. "Damn it! Why didn't you pick up?" she shrieked.

Angrily exiting the phone booth, she stormed her way back onto the nearby sidewalk, not caring as she brushed shoulders with two people upon doing so. Storming blindly ahead, she knew she didn't have a lot of time to make it back home before she'd draw suspicion about where she'd been, and the thought, for whatever the reason, made her even angrier. Nothing ever seemed to go her way. If she had a cell phone, she could've easily shut herself in her room and dialed the number over and over again, but no, her parents didn't think she _needed_ one. They were quite stupid like that.

As she hurriedly continued on her way down the sidewalk, Gabrielle shook her head; she was positively fuming. Passing by a young mother carrying a child in her arms, the young lady threw the girl a scathing look, one that apparently went unnoticed, as the child was being too fussy to be distracted away from. Gabrielle was never going to bog herself down with a responsibility such as _children_. The fact that anyone bothered to, especially in this current day and age of crime and carelessness, severely got under her skin. _Great_, she thought to herself, for now she was feeling even angrier.

Shuttering, she looked away from the woman and child, before hitching her bag further up on her shoulder. She had very nearly made it to the crosswalk when she was ambushed by someone coming out from a building and standing in front of her.

"I saw you in the phone booth a few minutes ago," Seph said to her, staring back at his friend, who now looked overwhelmingly surprised. "Who were you calling that you couldn't call from your home phone?"

"None of your business, and since when are you _following_ me?" Gabe replied, alarm in both her eyes and voice.

"Since when do you avoid telling me things?" Seph retorted.

Thinking about this for a moment, Gabe finally answered him, "Okay. I'll tell you what's going on, if you let me use your cell phone."

"That depends on what you need to use it for," Seph replied.

"Oh, it's nothing that would cause trouble, I assure you," she answered him, but he found, really, that he couldn't be so sure.


	3. Chapter 3

Gabe had been on her friend's cell phone for hours now. Beginning her marathon of calls after rushing through dinner with her parents, she'd dashed down the hall to her room, before taking Seph's cell phone from her back pocket. Smiling, she'd searched for the number she'd previously inputted into the phone's address book, lest she forget it. When she found it, she had pressed the button that would dial said number, before bringing the mobile phone to her ear. Seemingly repeating the events from earlier that same day, the phone had rang quite a few times without answer. Closing her eyes and inwardly hoping with all her might that her efforts wouldn't still be in vain, Gabe had tried again and again afterward to get the call to go through.

Now, as it neared eleven o'clock at night, the teenager slowly moved the phone from her ear, deciding not to redial it this time. It had all been for nought, and was she ever angry for it. Slipping the phone into her nearby nightstand drawer, she then stood up from her bed and gave a good stretch, before angrily exhaling, her eyes narrowing as she walked across the room to access her closet. Pulling a nightgown down from a hanger, Gabe then turned to the side and nearly screamed. Just outside her window was the shadowy figure of a person, and it wasn't until she grabbed a nearby flashlight to shine over the glass that she realized who it was.

"What are you doing here, Seph?" she asked, as she opened up the window from the inside, letting her friend enter the bedroom.

"I came to get my cell phone. My mother likes to make sure I have it in the mornings before I head off to school. She'd freak if it isn't on me tomorrow. _You_ said you'd have it back to me by eight o'clock tonight!"

"Well, sorry. I wasn't finished with it yet," Gabe answered him dismissively, before stepping over to her nightstand and jerkily pulling open its drawer. "Whatever. There it is. Take it."

"Thanks," Seph said, speaking in a cool voice that rivaled his friend's uncaring tone. "Why did you need to borrow it in the first place, again?"

"Since it didn't even work, it doesn't really matter, so, yeah," Gabe answered him, crossing her arms as Seph stuck his cell phone into his own jean's pocket.

"Okay then. Since it didn't work, I guess there's no need for you to, like, borrow it and not return it on time again, am I right?"

Rolling her eyes, Gabe didn't answer, but instead waved her nightgown about. "Just go, I have to get changed and go to bed."

"Yeah, okay. I'll go. Sweet dreams," Seph said sarcastically, before laughing dryly and adding, "Oh, and just so you know, don't count on going to see a movie with me this weekend, either."

Shrugging at this, Gabe replied, "Uhm, okay. It's not like a need you to go see a movie with."

Raising his eyebrows, Seph said to her, "What is up with you?"

"Sorry. Whatever. I'm just aggravated," Gabe said.

"Okay then. Guess I am, too," Seph retorted, before climbing on out of the window without further ado.

Lazily walking back over to the window, Gabe shut and locked it, before drawing her curtains and changing into her nightclothes.

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><p>As she walked into homeroom the following day, the tanned-skin Senior found that the seat in the classroom she normally took was already occupied by some geeky looking girl with frighteningly ginger hair. Raising her eyebrows so high upward that they seemed to disappear into her hairline, Gabrielle soon found herself holding onto her clutch bag so tightly that she might as well have been trying to crush it.<p>

"Oh, hey Gabe," Seph said nonchalantly, briefly looking away from the redhead he had been animatedly chatting with just before, and then returning his attention to said redhead again.

"Where am I supposed to sit?" Gabe asked, causing him to look up from the girl again.

"There are other empty seats," Seph said simply, to which Gabe shook her head adamantly.

"I _always_ sit _here_."

"Well, things change. People do, too. Everyone has to adjust accordingly."

"I see," Gabe said quietly, her stare cold as ice as her eyes pierced right through Seph; she then found a seat at the very back of the class, where she took to sulking and brooding.

From where she sat, she could clearly see Seph and the redheaded girl chatting and laughing together, about God knew what. Her eyes beady-looking, she could barely contain how angry she felt, and she soon took to tapping her foot nervously against the floor.

"Do you mind? I'm trying to study here," said a guy sat next to her.

Stopping her foot-tapping abruptly, Gabe shot the boy a nasty look. She knew who he was. He was the football team's quarterback, _and_ boyfriend to the volleyball team's captain, Teal Langolis. Being so popular, _of course_ Gabe knew him. His name was Claud Evans, though he normally just went by the latter.

"What's your problem?" Evans asked her, returning her disdainful stare. "It was annoying."

"You're annoying," Gabe said to him under her breath.

"What was that?"

Not answering him, Gabe turned her head to the side, staring at the wall instead.

"I _said_, _what - was - that_?" Evans repeated, and when Gabe looked back, she found that he'd left his seat, and was now standing before her, towering over her.

"I said that you're annoying. Since you think I'm annoying, I guess that just means we're even," she said nonchalantly.

"Whatever… _skank_," he finally said, before returning to his seat.

By now, everyone had turned their attention to either Gabe or Evans, or both. Well aware of everyone staring at her, Gabe stood up, hands trembling as she reclaimed her clutch bag. Feeling frozen for a few seconds or so, she ultimately overcame it and bolted from the room, out into the hallway. As she passed by a certain row of lockers, a vivid vision from her Freshman year flashed off in her head like a camera going off.

. . . . .

. . . . .  
>. . . . .<p>

"_Look at you. You think you're so pretty, so _cute_. Well aren't you in for a rude awakening now that you're here in _this_ school."_

"_I didn't do anything to you, Teal!"_

"_You _killed_ my dog, Gab-rielle."_

"_It's pronounced Gay-bri-ul. You know that. You've been my neighbor for years! And I didn't kill your stupid, idiotic _dog_."_

**_SMACK!_**

_Shrinking back against the lockers that afternoon after school had ended session, Gabe brought a hand to her stung face, glaring back at the tall, athletic blond girl standing in front of her. _

"_You knew he'd follow after you if you went jogging while he was out in the yard, playing. You could've gone jogging any other time, when he was safe on the inside of my house. Our parents made that clear to your parents, and I certainly made it clear to _you_. You have no excuses, Gab-rielle Stohnam. You went jogging when you did on purpose, just to make sure Gilbert would end up run over!"_

"_Whatever. I'm glad he's gone. Gilbert was the stupidest name ever given to any dog on the face of the Earth, anyway."_

_Groaning in pain as the girl called Teal landed a punch right to her gut, Gabe then cried out in shock as a second punch was landed to her very nose. With a sickening crunch sound, she just knew it had been broken. The blood that proceeded to gush down her face afterward only served as insult to injury, as it dripped down and ruined her favorite sweater._

Staring down at her, Teal spat at Gabrielle, before saying to her, "You deserve all this and more for what you did to my dog, you

skank_."_

_With that, the girl turned and marched calmly out of the school, leaving Gabe to slink down the lockers, her hands covering over her face as her eyes stung with tears she couldn't control. As she came to sit on the hard, cement floor of the school, she narrowed her eyes to try and see as the sound of footsteps approached her. _

"_What happened? Can I help you?" a boy's voice said to her, and she soon made out with her blurry vision the sight of a young man with dark hair kneeling down before her. "My God, you're bleeding..."_

"_Don't panic. Just got a little beaten up. That's all," Gabe said. "Nothing to worry about - I'll get her back later."_

"_Still, jeez, you need some help. Let me get you to the counselor's office - she stays afterhours most days. She'll be able to call an ambulance or your parents - someone to get you to a doctor. I'm Seph, by the way."_

"_Gabrielle," she had answered her soon-to-be friend, allowing him to help her to her feet as she continued to bleed. "But I like going by 'Gabe'."_


	4. Chapter 4

**(someone noted that Gabe is not a nice character. Psst, she is not supposed to be a nice character. Thanks for reading!)  
><strong>

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><p>Gabrielle sat by the window in the living room with a gloomy expression on her face. Rain was pouring down in torrents outside, and it only served to make her feel all the more depressed. Sighing rather loudly, she tapped her long, filed fingernails atop her closed laptop, before saying in a sort of drawl, "How <em>long<em> is the rain supposed to last today, Daddy?"

"We're in for heavy rain all week, supposedly," the bespectacled, balding man said to her, not looking up from his newspaper. "Should it really matter anyway, dear? What with you being sick and all, you can't exactly go out and walk around town or anything."

Rolling her eyes at the fact that her father was so pathetically clueless enough to believe her lie about having a cramp-giving flu bug in the first place, Gabe slunk down further onto the couch, before snuggling beneath the expensive, woven throw that was always kept across it. She was sick, in a matter of sorts, though not in the way she'd lied to her parents about.

Ever since running from the classroom and calling home from the office of the high school two days beforehand, Gabe hadn't had the nerve to even wish to _attempt_ to go back and face the sea of students who had hated her very existence from the get-go. Seph's friendship had made things tolerable enough in years past, but now she'd lost that, too. There really was no point in even trying to return to school as normal, as she saw it.

"Well, why don't you call Seph after school lets out today?" her father then said to her, as he paused to turn the page of his paper. "I'm sure he's concerned about your absence."

"No one is concerned about my absence. And I'm not concerned about anyone else, either. Just leave me alone."

Sighing sadly, the older man turned yet another page of the paper, thinking back to when his little girl was but of elementary age; a huggable, lovable little thing that sported pigtails and rosy cheeks. Now she had morphed into some sort of introverted, anti-social freak. How it had happened, Elan Stohnam didn't know - he simply knew that he didn't like it.

He'd had discussions about it with his wife, Carole. Carole - who was ten years his senior and who'd already half-raised a child by the time she met and married Elan and adopted little Gabrielle has her own daughter - didn't seem to have any good answers or observations for the man, either. Carole's flesh-and-blood daugther, Katrina, was a star student, and had never failed to be popular in anything she ever did. While not the best athelete, she was a whiz in every class, succeeding in many honours classes, in fact. And whilst she did all this, Gabrielle was left behind in the dust.

By the time Gabe had reached middle school and Katrina was far away in college, it was nothing short of blatantly obvious that Elan and Carole viewed the quiet, little freak as far less promising than her step-sister. It initially hurt her, the realization, that is, but overtime Gabe decided that it didn't much matter if she was anything like Katrina at all. After all, Katrina took after Carole; Carole was a successful stock broker. Carole had always been in the top of all her classes. Carole was a living goddess, more or less, and she never failed to remind Elan just how lucky he was to have found and married her.

Carole this - Carole that - it was as if Gabrielle's biological mother was a mere phantom; a fairy tale character that had never truly existed of which she'd once sprang forth from, only to have the said character melt away into the nothingness from which she'd came in the first place afterward.

Even now as she remained snuggled on the couch, that's how Gabrielle viewed her current existence. She was wandering about in a void of darkness, straining her mind to remember bits and pieces of her actual identity - parts that perhaps hadn't been lost or misguided by the intrusion of Carole and Katrina into hers and Elan's life.

She called Carole Mom, certainly. Carole _was_ her mother, or, at least, the only one she'd ever known, considering the fact that her birth-giver had died with a needle in her arm not quite a year after bringing Gabrielle into the world in the first place. From that point on, until age three, there had been no one in her life except Elan. And then, as if from nowhere, Carole and Katrina blossomed into the garden of her life, as well, and while Elan, Carole and Katrina formed the perfected, societal view of life, Gabrielle was left to be viewed as a weed, a weed that threatened to choke and take down the garden altogether.

As she now peered over at her father where he sat in his armchair, paper still in his grasp, Gabe pondered him, as if he were a subject to be studied. She found him and his actions rather akin to that of a dog, a dog that followed and obeyed its owner. In this case, that owner would be Carole, and while Gabe did somewhat feel it unkind to think of her father in such a light, she couldn't help but also agree with herself that it was simply altogether too true.

It had taken Elan years to realize that his daughter wasn't quite right in the mind. _Years_. It hadn't occurred to him, for whatever the reason, that the legacy of having a heroine-overdosed mother buried in a cememtary a few blocks down the street was of any trouble or concern to his young daugther until she was about age ten. As if suffering from the mother of all epiphanies, it was then that he began showering her with the stupidest little gifts: candles, novelty soaps and perfumes; lip glosses and records of all the betterknown pop artists. She thanked him and kept all of these things, aligned on dresser tops and desks in her bedroom, or on the shelf in the bathroom she shared with Katrina until she'd left for college. Yes, she'd thanked him, and yes, she'd found the objects nice, but they did not make her appear unto Carole or Elan or Katrina as any less of a freak than she'd ever been.

Even as she used the little soaps, or bathed in the perfume bath waters, or allowed her step-sister to do her hair in French braids, Gabe always ultimately returned to her routine of spending most all of her free time on what started out as a desktop computer, and what graduated into a laptop by the time she'd reached her early teens. Once she'd discovered the world of MMORPGs, that was the end all for other potential normal prospects for the girl, as far as Elan and Carole were concerned, and while they didn't see it as a truly harmful hobby, they did very much do their best to restrict her use of it. This did little to help anything, as it only made Gabrielle moodier and less tolerable when kept from playing the games she enjoyed best.

In the end, Elan and Carole practically gave up on trying to change their little freak at all. Focusing on Katrina and her elitest education instead, they provided her with a new car and helped to pay her rent for a townhouse in the next town over until she was able to pay for it all by herself with her salary from her new deskjob at some attorney's office.

Left behind once again in the dust of a much better sibling, Gabrielle ultimately decided that she rather enjoyed being left to her own devices. If she was nothing but an ignorable freak at home, then she could basically do as she pleased. No one excepted her to achieve fantastic grades. (She _did_, in fact, get excellent grades, but she wasn't pressured into doing so, so it hardly mattered.) And thus, for the most part, she stuck to her laptop and her _World of Warcraft_ gaming, and going to cinema shows with Seph.

Now, though, that had began to change. It was apparent that Seph had no interest in her after their kerfuffle over his cellphone, and after Evans had challenged her in front of the entire homeroom, she herself had no desire to place herself in a classroom situation, either. Evans, Teal, Seph, the redheaded girl who'd stolen her seat - they could all go to hell for all she cared now. Sulking further, she slunk fully down onto the couch, pulling the couch throw all the way up over the top of her head.

"_The local Behavioral Analysist Unit has decided that the subject in question is most likely a white female in either her twenties or thirties, and she seems to be seeking out to kill recently released criminal subjects who have recently finished paying their dues in jail._"

Glancing up and over the top of the throw to view the television screen's news' break, Gabe did a double-take as she caught sight of a familiar looking young man standing amongst a small crowd of people standing outside the local police station. She knew him. _It was Reid._ Sitting bolt upright on the couch at once, she reached to the coffee table and snatched up the remote control to turn up the television's volume.

"_Yes_," Reid was now saying to the crowd, speaking in his slightly awkward tone of voice. "_We believe the unsub is a young woman who was once pressured into doing many things - pressured to succeed, in terms of academics and the like, possibly by overbearing parents._"

"_Precisely,_" a second person spoke up then, an African-American man that was standing in place between Reid and a thin, brunette woman. "_We believe that she is targeting released criminals due to having a god-complex about herself. Perhaps she finds herself _so_ intelligent and learned that she can take the power upon herself to deal out justice to others._"

"_Are there any other defining features, then?_" a reporter asked, sticking her microphone out as far as it'd reach to the B.A.U. "_For instance, are there specific types of criminals she seeks out - druggists, rapists? Or are there any other defining links between the victims themselves? Anything at all like that?_"

"_There is _one_ thing,_" the thin brunette said, in a somewhat cautious sort of voice. _"Not _all _of the victims have criminal records. As a matter of fact, the majority of those murdered thus far have seemed to have been high school drop-outs once upon a time. Not recent drop-outs, no, but drop-outs from as far back as six or seven years ago. In all actuality, this connection seems to serve as more of a point than the criminal record one, to be completely honest._"

So was this why Spencer Reid never answer his phone as of late? Was he honestly this busy with just such a case?

As Gabe began to ponder over what she'd heard on the television, she found it puzzling. Why would someone single out high school dropouts to murder? She couldn't manage to make it fit in her mind, and yet, Gabrielle Stohnam still saw it as something that could be useful to her. As she looked back to the television screen, an 800-number tipline was flashed across the bottom of the screen. Quickly jotting it down on the inside of her wrist with a ink pen found on the coffee table, Gabe smirked to herself. So what if she couldn't reach Reid at the _1966_ extension? She'd be able to get in touch with the B.A.U. now for sure, even if it meant making up a few tips to humor their hotline operators with.


	5. Chapter 5

Spencer Reid had just finished going over all of the evidence that the B.A.U. had compiled for what felt like the hundreth time. No matter how much he re-analyzed everything before him, there were one or two things that never seemed to fit right. The team, as a whole, had seemed so certain that the unsub in question was certainly in their twenties or thirties. It had seemed to make sense at the first notion of it. Yet, it didn't quite fit at this point.

"If she were in her early twenties, she wouldn't have been graduating her senior year seven years ago. And if she were in her thirties, it'd have been longer than seven years ago that she'd have graduated," he mused aloud to himself, before glancing over as someone else approached him. "Hey, Hotchner."

"Hello, Reid," the raven-haired man replied, giving a nod of his head as he did acknowledged his team member. "Still stuck on the age issue?"

"Well... _yeah_," the younger man answered truthfully, shaking his head slightly as he frowned to himself. "I mean, really, she'd have to be precisely twenty-five to have graduated in any typical fashion."

"We could be dealing with a younger graduate," Hotchner said to him. "You yourself should know better than anyone that an especially intelligent person doesn't neccesarily have to be eighteen to finish their highschool career."

"Of course it's possible, but not probable. People leaving highschool with completed educations younger than the age of eighteen are actually quite rare, as I'm sure you know. I just don't think this unsub was one of those rarities. I think we're overlooking her motive in these killings."

Pausing and placing his hand to his chin, Hotchner looked back over the evidence again, a serious look in his eyes as he studied everything posted up on the wall. "Well, we could always consult Garcia. She'd be able to find a link we haven't yet realized, assuming there is one to be found."

* * *

><p>Placing the phone she'd just been speaking on down onto its reciever on her desk, a thin-framed brunette with big, brown eyes leant back slightly in her chair, before turning in it to look over to someone who was walking toward her.<p>

"Any luck manning the tip hotline?" an African-American male asked her, pausing to lean back against the side of her desk when he arrived there, while he folded his arms across his chest.

"Actually, I think so, Morgan," she answered him, chewing slightly at the side of her lower lip. "There was a very curious tip just phoned in. A girl is claiming that she believes the unsub to be an actual relative of hers."

"Really?" the man called Morgan replied, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "That's a break and a half, Prentiss - assuming there's any merit to it."

Sighing, the woman gave a slight smile to her team member, before saying, "I certainly hope it does. She's coming in later on this afternoon so I can talk to her about her allegations. I hope there's something more to this than just another ill-minded person playing more head games."

"You're telling me," Morgan replied. "This unsub is difficult enough to map out all the way as it is, without nonsense and hoaxes being thrown into the mix. You know, I think Reid is on to something about the age thing."

"You mean how he thinks we're off in some way? I suppose he might be right, but, still, the only major motive I can imagine an actual senior in highschool would have would be bullying - you know, taking out the ones who are giving them hell? But that makes little sense, since all the victims thus far have come from a total of three different high schools in this city."

"Yeah, I know. Besides, if this _is_ a senior, where exactly are they getting their arsenal from? We've had this unsub shoot someone at close range, sure, but all the rest of the deaths involved a medicinal poisoning in some way. I can't see a teenager having that much access to pharmacuticals - not the ones we've seen implemented so far, at least."

"I know, Morgan. This is one of the most difficult cases to come across our desks in ages," Prentiss admitted with a second, heavier sigh. "I mean, if the unsub is an accomplished doctor - or even a very skilled nurse - then they're practically guaranteed to be at least in their thirties, if not... older, to have such an extensive access to all these meds."

"Sure, but then you have to wonder," Morgan pointed out. "What motive would a forty-something year old have in murdering highschool drop-outs?"

* * *

><p>"Right. I have something here that I didn't manage to pull up the first few times I dug around for information."<p>

Typing away fiercely at a keyboard as she sat behind a number of monitors, a bespectacled woman with long, blond hair spoke into an earpiece as she continued further with her cybersleuthing, before coming to a pause. "Right, ready to hear what I have?"

"As always," Hotchner said at the other end of the line, smiling. "What have you got for us, Garcia?"

"Well, the thing is, like I figured out already, all of the victims were from three different high schools in this very city. That said, I found something that connects them despite the difference in alma mater. See, they all formed this tri-school quiz bowl team."

"Quiz bowl team?" Hotchner repeated back. "And all of them were a member?"

"According to the records here, yes, that happened to be the case in the year 2000 - each and every one of them happened to be a member. All six."

"So, a pair from each school?" Hotcher ventured to guess, before nodding to himself as Garcia confirmed so at the other end of the line. "Thank you so much. As always, you were very helpful."

"Anytime," he listened to her reply, before bidding her goodbye and ending the phone call.

"Well, Reid, we have another connection we didn't know about before," he said at once, nodding his head in the direction of the evidence wall. "All six victims so far were all members of a singular, tri-school quiz bowl team. These aren't random victims for sure. They were definitely targeted specficially, no doubt about it."

Then walking up to the evidence wall, he looked at the papers printed out that noted which victims were from what highschools, before adding, "It seems weird that half the team went on to commit crimes, but then again, if this was some elitest group or something, maybe they just experienced a mild rebellion or something later on. That does seem to be the theme so far in this case, both with the victims and with the unsub - pressure to over-achieve, ultimately collapsing under said pressure."

"Well, yeah, but at the very least, none of the crimes carried terribly long sentences - robbing a vending machine, shoplifting - attempted assault was the worst one, but that victim got released early from their sentence," Spencer replied, before adding, "But I still can't decipher what kind of a motive our unsub has... Well, all I can think to do is to go and let Prentiss, Morgan and Rossi know about this quiz bowl tie-in. Maybe they've come up with something else on their end by now, anyway."

"Yeah," Hotchner agreed. "I wanted to ask Prentiss what the tipline has turned up anyway, since she's taking the calls today."


	6. Chapter 6

Gabrielle Stonham had never found herself within a police station before, yet here she sat, across a small table that currently seat two, looking back at the brunette woman she'd seen on the television news break merely days beforehand.

"As I said when I first introduced myself, my name is Emily Prentiss," she said, giving Gabe a polite nod of the head, before adjusting herself in her seat, to be more comfortable.

Watching her actions, her fidgets - the scrutinous expression in her eyes - Gabe knew already that this woman wasn't really too certain that she could believe the story about the girl sitting before her being related to the unsub they were seeking. If there was one thing Gabe really disliked, it was when people didn't take her seriously.

Her first striking memory of such an occurence taking place had happened fairly early on in her childhood. Occused repeatedly of stealing money from Katrina's wallet over the summer before second grade, the quite young Gabe remembered feeling frustrated. She certainly hadn't taken a single penny from her step-sister's wallet. She never so much as touched her purse. Unknown to both she and Elan and Carole, Katrina had _actually_ been spending her own money on a small time pill habit, buying from a seller at school. Then, when she needed the money for other things - gasoline, cosmetics, school events - she'd have to request more from her mother, which led to much suspicion.

To this day, no one had ever figured out specifically what Katrina had been blowing her money on, however, Elan and Carole _did_ eventually catch their older daughter in a lie about her spending in general. Gabe was suddenly freed of all guilt. While both her parents had apologized profusely for not trusting her in the first place, she never shook the way it felt to be called something she wasn't. To be doubted, untrusted - it was a sickening feeling for her, a most disturbing one, indeed.

And so as she sat behind the table, her hands folded politely in her lap, she watched as the woman before her finally scooted in closer to the table herself, before offering Gabe what she could only guess was a fake smile, at best. She then proceeded to clear her throat slightly and begin asking the questions she had prepared in her mind.

"Gabrielle, you're a Senior at your high school, yes?"

"That's right."

"And as of late, you haven't actually been attending school though, due to sickness?"

"You could say that," Gabe said with the faintest of shrugs.

Nodding her head, Prentiss replied, "Well, I hope you feel better soon, but I still need to ask you a few questions today."

"That's why I'm here," Gabe answered, before crossing her arms and leaning back slightly in the chair.

"Of course," Prentiss replied, before saying, "Now, you said on the phone that you believed yourself to be related to the subject in question regarding the series of murders involving both criminals and old high school dropouts?" When Gabe nodded to confirm this, she asked, "What relation of yours, exactly, do you suspect is either perpertraiting or aiding in these crimes?"

"My step-sister," Gabe said in a rather nonchalant manner, her arms remaining folded over her bosom. "Her name is Katrina Ford. She's ten years older than I am, and her birthday is December 5th, 1984."

"Right," Prentiss replied, scrawling the name and birthdate down on a notepad she had with her, noting to check out this person's identity further later on - just in case. "What makes you suspicious of her being connected to these crimes?"

"On the television, your team said that the unsub was likely to be someone who had been pressured into being a star student and then some, more or less. That's Katrina for you, in a nutshell. Not to mention, she has a Narcisistic personality. I wouldn't put it past her."

"Well... not putting it past her is one thing. Actually having valid enough reason to accuse someone of these crimes is another. I appreciate your concern, and your time and efforts spent her today, Gabrielle, but I have to say that the type of person you just described is sadly par for the course these days."

Sighing, Gabe shook her head slightly, uncrossing her arms as she sat up straighter in the chair. "She's in the right age range, and no, she's not a par for the course kind of self-absorbed star student, if that's what you're trying to imply. Which, by the way, it sounds like you are."

"Okay then, what is it exactly that sets her apart, Gabrielle?" Prentiss asked, her brows furrowing as she tried to better understand what point the girl before her was trying to make exactly.

"She's working now at a lawyer's office, or something. I'm not studied on all the details. _But_, before that, she went to nursing school. She desperately wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps. Carole - I call her Mom, but she's my stepmother, and Katrina's real mother - well anyway, Carole once was a nurse for quite a number of years. Then she lost her job. But this was a number of months before she met and married my father, so neither he nor I ever were told why she lost her first job. Either way, Carole being a stock broker instead of a nurse now isn't relevant."

Irrelevant though Gabe thought it was, Prentiss wrote the factoid down on her notepad anyway. Again - just in case.

"Katrina wanted to do it, be a nurse for Mom, since Mom couldn't do it anymore for whatever reason, you know? But she didn't do all that well. Sure, she had A+ scores for the book work and all that for the three and a half years she attended, but it was in that last midterm she screwed it all up. She failed her last clinical at the hospital by reaching into the container of contaminated needles without looking behind herself to see where she was reaching. Her story is she was going for the glove box, but eh, she was just too nervous to practically apply what she'd learned book wise. Thankfully, she was tested and hadn't contracted anything from the needle container, but needless to say, her chances of finishing the clinical ended right then and there.

I remember her fearing that she might fail her first few clinical experiences, before she even had a chance to do them. Then she finally did fail one - her last one. She was inconsolable. She'd have had to repeat the entire half a year she'd already completed again. She wasn't game for that. Her nerves were shot. I wouldn't find it impossible to think that, given the circumstances in play, that my sister could snap."

Nodding slowly as she jotted down a few more choice tidbits of information as Gabe rattled on with her explanation about her alleged step-sister, Prentiss waited until the girl seemed to have said her piece, before leaning in slightly toward the table.

"As I said before, thank you for your time and your information, Gabrielle," she said to her, before sitting up straighter and reaching across the table to shake the girl's hand. "If I need anything else, I'll be giving you a call back at the number you provided when you first came in and spoke to the main office secretary."

"Is that all?" Gabe said, returning the handshake, but otherwise looking perturbed about the relative shortness of the interview she'd just given. "No one else wants to speak to me?"

"Well, it'll be up to me to pass on the more crucial information to the other members of my team. Don't worry - the information is in good hands."

"But, no, I wanted to speak to Dr. Spencer Reid," Gabe said, not having any of this silliness about this Emily Prentiss being the face of the team, the catchall of information to give to the others. "He spoke at my school not too long ago. That's how I know who he is," she then clarified.

"Well, I don't see any reason why it's _neccesary_ for him to question you," Prentiss said to Gabe, only annoying her further.

"_Look_," Gabe then said. "I'm trying terribly not to be rude in how I say it, but I really insist that I must speak to Dr. Reid."

Feeling baffled by the insistance, Prentiss finally relented, saying to Gabe, "You know what? If it's really that important to you, then I'll go make sure he isn't too busy for a visitor at the moment, and see if he'll speak to you. I'll be right back."

Waiting within the small room as Prentiss left to go and find out the situation of her co-worker, Gabe couldn't help but to smile, and so she did her best to hide it, lest she look, well, a little _too_ happy to be seeing this man. Still, she'd done her best to get a hold of him, and finally it looked like she'd be not just in touch, but face to face with Spencer once again.

Relenting her own self, Gabe relaxed just a bit, allowing herself a small smile in the end. After all, she couldn't help it. She had a burning question to ask him, regardless of whatever it was _he_ might decide to ask _her_.


	7. Chapter 7

"You're _certain_ you have no idea why your step-mother had to leave her job as a nurse?"

"No idea whatsoever. I've been in the attic of our home – I found awards there, and accolades regarding both her achievements at nursing school and being on the job itself. I don't know why she doesn't display them, and, like I said, I have no idea why she isn't still working as a nurse, either."

Leaning back in his chair a bit, Spencer Reid looked back to Gabrielle as if she were a baffling subject to be studied further. Inwardly, he went over what she said to him and, (if she was being truthful, which he felt that she had been) what she had apparently said to Prentiss, as well.

Her step-sister was an over-achiever that had prematurely failed her chances at being a nurse. Her step-_mother_ had been a nurse for years, but had ultimately succumbed to failure, as well. Her step-sister, supposedly, had a Narcissistic personality, but Gabe appeared to have features that indicated she had one herself. He then spoke again, questioning something she had told Prentiss the day before, on the telephone.

"I have a question, Gabe," he began, looking over the notes Prentiss had left with him, finding that she'd wrote out the question he was about to ask already in her notes.

"Yes, Spence?" the girl replied.

"Yesterday you identified yourself, amongst other things, as an only child who had concerns that a relative of hers might actually _be_ the unsub we're searching for. Correct?"

"Correct."

"Well the question is fairly obvious in origin then, but, I'll still ask it. Why did you say you were an only child, when you, in fact, have a step-sibling you insist that you know quite well?"

"It's perhaps nothing more than a matter of opinion," Gabe said. "But see, the way I see it, I am – truly – an only child. I have no one exactly like me but myself in the whole world. No one else on the face of this planet has the same exact two parents that I do, genetically speaking."

"I do see. Point made," Reid said to her, leaning back in his chair once again.

* * *

><p>"There's something …off about her. You know, how when you're talking to someone and you can just feel it, how there's something not quite right?" Prentiss was stood with her back to Hotchner's desk, her arms folded as she leant back slightly, against the edge of the table. "You know what I mean, right?"<p>

"Oh definitely," answered Garcia, nodding her head as she stood near the opposite side of the desk. "The heebie-jeebies."

"The creeps," Morgan agreed, nodding his head curtly.

"I think we have all felt that way at some point or another while speaking to someone who might be connected to a case. The real question here is whether or not it means that this girl that was questioned is honestly connected to these crimes, be it through a relative, or some other way," Hotchner said, frowning slightly.

"Well, this Gabrielle kid probably lives as similarly a pressured life as the step-sister she suggests," Rossi said then, as he stood beside Hotchner. "If the parents were a certain way with _one_ child, then..."

"But consider the age difference," Prentiss said, shaking her head. "Katrina Ford was raised by her mother for years before she had her step-father as a parent, too."

"For all we know," Garcia began, adjusting her glasses as she went on. "Gabe's father raised her with an entirely different range of parental tactics than her step-mother raised the step-sister with."

"We'll get to the bottom of it," Hotchner said. "We can compare notes with Reid when he's finished speaking with her, too. In the meantime, we need your help, as always, Garcia."

"You name it – I'll hack until I find it," the blonde replied at once with a smile.

"How _do_ you do it?" Morgan asked her with a smirk.

"Wouldn't _you_ like to know?" she replied, just as playfully, before turning her attention to Hotchner. "So, what do you need to know, boss?"

"Well, could you verify that the information Gabe gave us regarding her step-sister is true and accurate. And then, once you've done that, can you find out whatever you can about the step-mother, especially in regards to why she lost her nursing license?"

"Yeah," Prentiss added, speaking up. "At this point, I'm really curious to know that myself."

* * *

><p>"So," Gabe said, observing Spencer in a quite serious way as she looked back to him. "You asked me something that had been burning in your mind – something you just had to know. May I ask you something in return?"<p>

"Sure," Reid replied nonchalantly. "Go for it."

"Thank you," Gabe returned, smiling politely. "When you were at my school, speaking – where you partially analyzed me - why did you start off so well, only to end the demonstration by lying in a spectacularly obvious way?"

Reid blinked, before eventually nodding his head slowly, and then saying, "You pressured me into answering you. I said you were quietly popular and had more friends than you realized, rather than – as you ascertained – telling the truth, because I felt I had to. You're bright, Gabe. I'm sure you know perfectly well exactly why I did it."

"I know you were trying to be nice, yeah. I get that."

"Well, would you have rather had me say potentially embarrassing things instead, in front of that whole auditorium?"

"Spencer, I would have rather, if possible, to have had you be polite to a point, but not go off on an imaginary tangent about how I've been popular all along. You get it, why it was so upsetting to me. I can just_ look_ at you and know you get it."

Sighing, Gabrielle frowned, before continuing on with her rant. "You weren't extremely popular, either, were you? At least, not in school, you weren't. Even though you are, I have to say, rather handsome, you were, and are still, far too intelligent to have ever been truly accepted in a place like _high school_. Would _you_ like to have been grouped up together, supposedly one and the same with all of those other nasty, abusive bastards?"

When Reid said nothing to this, and simply glanced away, she spoke further. "While I'm at it, I'd also guess that you grew up with a less than stellar home life, giving you a need and a determination to try to please and be as kind as possible to pretty much whoever you come across, even if it means getting walked all over-"

"You know, Gabe," Reid said, interrupting her. "You would make a good criminal profiler. At least, you would, if you had a grasp on the concept of a little thing called empathy."

Considering this for a moment, the Gabrielle eventually spoke again. "My father speaks little of my mother. What I do know, I fought hard to get out of him. One thing, though, that always seems to this day reoccur is his tendency to describe her as highly empathetic. She died when I was a baby, of a heroin overdose. Not for nothing, choosing drugs and an early death over raising the daughter you bothered to have doesn't seem very empathetic to me."

"You don't have to be perfect to be empathetic," Reid said. "I am _very_ sorry that you lost your mother, and I'm sorry about how you lost her, too. Still - the thing is - being an addict doesn't generally allow you the option to choose much at all, in terms of both how you respond to situational stress, and how you react to decision-making in general."

"So…" Gabe said, another moment later. "You've also dealt with drug addiction yourself, I presume? Either in yourself or in a loved one - I'm almost certain of it. After all, only an empathetic person like you could find a way to explain away another addict's terrible decisions."


	8. Chapter 8

Dropping the paper full of scribbled notes he'd taken while speaking with Gabrielle down onto a desk, Reid turned to Hotchner and Rossi, before shaking his head and saying, "She is a piece of work."

"What did you find out?" Hotchner asked him.

Continuing to shake his head in apparently bewilderment, Reid said, "Honestly, not much more than Prentiss found out before me. I think I'm just in awe of how maddening this kid is."

"What are you talking about?" Morgan asked him, looking confused.

Hesitating for a moment as he turned to lean back against the edge of the desk in the room, Reid crossed his arms over his chest, before leaning his head over to the side slightly and saying, "She can read actions and make dead-on assumptions about a person's tendencies and personality. At the same time, she's ridiculously Narcissistic. She'd like to make you think she knows a person better than they know themselves, while not quite accepting her own faults. She might easily be able to _list_ her own faults, sure, but I think her perspective regarding them is seriously skewed."

"Skewed in what way exactly?" Rossi then asked.

"Well," Prentiss began. "It seemed to me – when I interviewed Gabrielle – that she was willing to sell out her step-sister as a full-of-herself, on the verge of snapping individual. However, she seems to not be aware of how she comes across her own self."

"Yes," Reid agreed. "That's very much how she behaved when speaking with me, as well. The other thing - leading more to my skewed perspective statement - is the fact that no matter all of the faults Gabe might say she has, she always makes it out to be the case that they are the result of someone else's fault. Now, this didn't shine through too much in the actual answers she gave me. It was more in the written transcription of her hotline call, and in the written affidavit I had her write for me before she left."

It was at this moment that Hotchner felt his phone buzz within his pants' pocket, and as such, he then excused himself, stepping out of the office to take the call. Despite this, Reid continued on with his explanation.

"In the written statement, Gabe explained that her lack of care for turning in her own step-sister was due to the fact that her step-sister was always in the spotlight over her. Note that, instead of turning an alleged suspect in order to possibly prevent a further loss of life, her reasons behind pointing the finger at her step-sister were self-serving. She also spoke to me regarding her claiming to be an only child when she called the hotline."

"I was curious about that myself," Prentiss said, moving to walk closer toward Reid. "What did she say when you called her on it?"

"She said that she felt that she really _is_ an only child. Her father and her mother, together, only created one person - that person being her. Since only she alone has the combined genetics of her parents, she considers herself one of a kind."

"So, more or less, it's Katrina's fault for not sharing the same DNA as Gabrielle does?" Rossi mused aloud, before exchanging exasperated glances with Morgan, who said, "This girl really must be full of herself."

"I was going to press her further about the 'only child' statement myself in the first place . . ." Prentiss said, a bit of a frown on her face. "But she really . . . got under my skin."

"It's okay," Reid said to the brunette, nodding his head slightly. "She got beneath mine as well."

The team members in the room then looked over to the desk as the phone upon it began to ring; Morgan reached over and pressed the button to answer it.

"I've got some info for you guys," said Garcia's voice, from the other end of the line.

"Awesome to hear, baby girl – you're on speakerphone – what have you found for us?" Morgan answered.

"Well, for starters, all of the provided information from Gabe is true and accurate so far. There is something of interest I found on the step-mother, too."

"Oh?" Prentiss said.

"Yes. The step-mother, who was – at the time – going by the name Caroleyn M. Lemieux, lost her license to practice nursing when she was discovered stealing meds from the storage closet in the ICU of the McKenzie-Garth General Hospital. She was, initially, trying to fight the charge, and had successfully falsified her status in the medical community enough to get a new job working in a local clinic. However, she stole some of the meds on-campus there as well, ensuring that she'd lose her license for once and for all."

"So we're dealing with a former junkie?" Rossi ventured to guess.

"I don't think so . . ." Garcia said then. "I've found a criminal charge of selling prescription medication in her youth. She was only fourteen at the time she'd done it, though. The sentence wasn't too harsh as a result, but it leads me to think that, if she was capable of raising a daughter by herself for so long, before getting into the stock broking business, that she wasn't an addict. It'd seem to me to be too much of a struggle to juggle raising a child by yourself _while_ getting your fix all the while."

"So then," Morgan said, his brows furrowing. "We're dealing with a woman who has a secret past as a drug dealer, who overcame it and managed to raise a gifted daughter in an affluent neighborhood, before marrying into a well-established family, and all the while never letting her husband or her step-daughter become privy to the darker times of her past?"

"That seems to be the case," Garcia said simply. "I'm gonna go now. I'll call back if I find anything new or scandalous to pass along."

"We look forward to it," Morgan said, before reaching over to disconnect the call; after he'd done so, he turned his attention to Reid. "I can't help but to wonder now, after all you said about her – do you think it's possible that _she_ – Gabe – had something to do with these cases of serial killings?"

Mulling over the thought for a moment, Reid felt ready to give his opinionated answer, but was stopped from doing so when Hotchner stepped back into the room, a distressed look on his face. "We have a situation just a few blocks down the street from here," he said.

* * *

><p>"What are you <em>doing<em>?" Seph exclaimed in a high-pitched tone of voice; he was sweating profusely, and his stomach was wriggling uncomfortably from nerves as he felt his body continue to be held hostage. "Put – down – the gun."

"You keep your mouth shut!" a female's voice hissed into his ear, as she tightened her grasp on the gun in her hand, pressing the barrel of the revolver into the side of the terrified young man's head, just by his ear. "No one asked you to speak."

"_Ma'am_," said a different voice then – a sterner voice, one with more authority to it. "Put down the gun and release the boy."

"No one asked you to speak, either," the gun-wielder said in a quiet voice, before pulling the trigger of the revolver.


	9. Chapter 9

All geared up and ready to investigate the apparent crime that had been reported in to Hotchner's radio, the B.A.U. team raced to the alleged location. The five team members – divvied into two cars, one carrying Hotchner and Rossi – the other carrying Reid, Prentiss and Morgan - hurried on as fast as they could to reach the location. As the cars approached the scene, they could see even from the distance they were at that something had certainly gone down.

Lying sideways on the street – whether dead, conscious or feigning otherwise, they couldn't tell – was a police officer from a local precinct. A trail of something murky and dark was spotted near her head by Prentiss, though, as the car she was pulled up nearer. Feeling a lurch in the pit of her stomach as both cars came to a stop before a line of thick, plastic yellow tape, Prentiss was therefore the first to step out of the vehicle.

"F.B.I. Agent Emily Prentiss," she said to identify herself, flashing her badge to the first officer she came across. "What's happened to that officer over there?"

"An unknown informant contacted the federal bureau of investigations and tipped off Agent Aaron Hotchner to the possibility that the Drop-Out Killer is at it again." Then pointing over to the direction of the officer that was still lying on the ground, the cop continued on with his explanation, "Other anonymous callers called in to report suspicious activity to the local police department and a dispatch was sent out to three local officers on patrol to drive over and check out the situation."

"Well _how_ exactly did the situation end up like _this_?" Morgan then said, stepping over the yellow tape and pointing over toward the body of the fallen officer. "When exactly was she shot? Why has no one attended to her!"

"Morgan – calm down!" Prentiss hissed, before pointing over toward the direction of a nearby telephone pole.

Though it wasn't easy to see at first, upon second glance agents Morgan and Prentiss realized exactly why everyone was so standoffish – so disturbed and perturbed, and not rushing to the aid of the fallen officer: located near one of the Main Street shop windows stood a disturbed-looking female, who happened to have an arm wrapped around the torso of an unidentified male – an apparent hostage.

"She shot out the glass panes of the boutique window moments ago, and then shot Officer Feriér afterward. She is _currently_ threatening to harm the young man she has hostage if anyone comes any closer to her. That's what happened anyway, _to_ Feriér. She tried to step in – tried to intervene, talk the woman down, you know . . . and, well . . ."

"So we definitely need to keep our distance with this subject," Hotchner said in a low tone of voice as he walked over toward the officer, Prentiss and Morgan, not taking his eyes off of the near-distant woman who was now pressing the revolver's nuzzle further into the side of her hostage's neck.

"That kid . . . he looks _familiar_ . . ." Reid said then, speaking also in a low tone of voice as he carefully and quietly stepped over to Hotchner, Prentiss and Morgan; Rossi was off to the side, speaking to a different officer.

"Where do you think you know him from then?" Morgan asked Reid, who – himself – wore a puzzled look on his face as he tried to get a better look upon the face of the hostage being held.

In Reid's mind, pictures and places and frames were coming in and out of focus. Voices and faces were being put together, and at once, with a burst of clarity, he saw Gabe's face in his mind, and she was smiling because she was thinking of - and speaking of - a friend.

"That kid there - the one being held hostage - he _knows_ Gabe Stohnam. . ." Reid said quietly, before clearing his voice and adding, "She's mentioned him to me. His name is Seph. He was one of her only, if not her _only_ friend in that whole high school."

"So then who's this holding him hostage?" Prentiss asked.

"And better yet – _why_?" Morgan added.

"Well, we may not know a lot about why this kid's being held hostage, but we definitely have no question now about whether or not this Gabrielle kid has something to do with this case or not. She must have _something_ to do with it," Hotchner said, before quickly flipping open his mobile phone, pressing a speed-dial number on the keys as he brought it to his ear.

"Garcia," he said, in a quiet but firm voice. "I don't care how you do it – find the Gabe kid that just left our offices earlier on, and find her now. Track her cell phone – anything. We need her now to figure out what's going on with a hostage situation that's currently going down."

"No one would be able to find me by tracking a cell phone," said a voice then, coming from behind Hotchner. "I was never allowed to have a cell phone."

Slowly turning to see who had spoken to him, the agent found himself standing merely a few feet away from Gabrielle herself. "Never mind, Garcia," he muttered into his cell phone then. "I have her right before me."

"Look, I'm _sorry_. . ." the olive-skinned teenager said at once, turning her attention to Reid, whom she gave an imploring, apologetic look. "I never meant for Seph to get caught up in _any_ of this. I'd realized my mistake just now – honest! I was wrong about Katrina. I'd just realized it, and it all clicked in my head - how it _couldn't_ be her. I phoned Seph from a payphone to come and be with me on the walk back, and then we were _on_ our way back, and then she came out of nowhere - like she expected us or something. And now, now she has Seph! All I wanted to do was to come back and tell you all what I'd realized. . ."

"What did you realize, Gabe?" Reid asked her, taking a few steps in, closer toward her. "What do you need to tell us?"

"Spence, I-" she began, before gasping quietly, and staring down the lower left corner of her stomach; a small, round hole was growing in circumference there suddenly through her light purple sweater, in a sickening, slow-motion way.

As the blood slowly continued to pool around the quarter-sized hole in Gabe's abdomen, she looked back at Reid, her eyes seeming to want to cry, though not a single tear formed in either corner of them.

"Stay with me now, Gabe!" she heard him call to her, before the sensation of gravity brought her to her knees, and the world faded in and out around her, becoming a disturbing, slow vignette of black shadow curtaining in around her vision as she fell.


	10. Chapter 10

Caroleyn Marcia Lemieux had been born on a cold, rainy night on the twenty fourth of December on a year that her own mother would fail to recall in years to come. Never knowing a father, she _did_ know a slew of "uncles", "cousins", "man-friends", and, even, on special occasions, legitimate _boy_friends. By age thirteen, she'd come to have one of her very own, even if he _had_ been her mother's boyfriend first, and even if he _was_ twenty years older than she herself was at the time.

Dave, he'd gone by - just Dave – nothing more, nothing less. He'd taught Caroleyn all there was to know about the game of love, all about the crying game, and was also thoughtful enough to recruit her into the lucrative business of hooking buyers of prescription medications that he himself had scored from not even God knew where to sell them to. Caroleyn was happy enough to play along with this until the arrest came.

At first, it seemed no big deal to her. Sure, she was scared – who wouldn't be? Then, when her mother wouldn't post bail for her, she told herself, _Hey – why should _that_ surprise me?_ No, it was only once her Dave abandoned her that Caroleyn decided to strike out on her own. She did what little jail time ordered of her (considering that it _was_ so short due to both her age, her lack of a prior record, _and_ the fact that she gave up information on Dave himself in exchange for time, as well) and eventually got her G.E.D., before entering into nursing school. All things considered, she was doing fairly well for herself by the time she reached her very last semester at said nursing school. Days away from graduating, she felt she had it all: her mother (who'd always been a cantankerous sore spot than an actual parent to her) was no longer in her life, she herself hadn't tasted a single drug since her early teens, and she had a wonderful, caring fiancé to boot.

Life was _perfect_.

It has been noted by many people before (and will be noted by as many more in the future) that the one thing that always seems to come most predominantly before a fall is pride. If ever there was a truer case and example of this, it'd have to be the one that unfolded the _second_ that Caroleyn became too complacent within her own surroundings.

Now, it had happened to be the case that she hadn't been feeling so well in the days leading up to her actual day of graduation. Literally the _day_ before said graduation, a test at a free clinic gave her an explanation for her ill feelings. Not quite too foolish, she half-expected her fiancé to try and bail out once she told him the news, which, by the way, she did directly give to him after the graduation ceremony itself. However, to her pleasant surprise (and utmost relief) Frederick Ford was over the moon about the news of his wife-to-be expecting a baby.

As it was, Caroleyn M. Lemieux, R.N., soon to be wife and mother, was also over the moon regarding her life itself. She had never once accounted for the ghosts of her past, nor had she ever expected a single one of them to dare slip back to haunt her. That said, if she_ had_ expected one of them to bother her, it'd have been her mother. But no, most surprisingly of all, it was he who had initially abandoned her once upon a time that came barging back into her life on a cold, rainy, Christmas Eve night that she herself would rather not recall the exact year of.

There had been a knock at the door just after seven o'clock that afternoon. Considering the fact that Fred's family was expected to come over for a Christmas Eve dinner, this was not remotely unexpected or surprising.

Without even checking to look through the peephole, Caroleyn opened the door with a smile on her face, only to gasp aloud and drop the box of turkey stuffing she'd been holding in her left hand, leaving it to fall to the ground, its contents spilling out across the tiled floor.

"It's taken me for_ever_ to find you, you little _bitch_."

Shaking her head in disbelief, the young woman took a few steps back away from the door, bringing a hand to her mouth as she looked back at the gaunt-looking face of the man she once knew as her first boyfriend.

"You were just a kid. You didn't even think twice about turning me in, did'ya? You got me kept in the can for a _long_, _long_ time, kiddo - a good, long ole time."

"Dave, I –"

"Don't speak my name, you dirty little whore. I saw your wedding announcement in the newspaper. Saw your birth announcement, too. So you thought you could do better, right? Screw your past – move on up to the high part of the neighborhood? Marry a rich guy, have his kid? You think you have it all?"

Before Caroleyn could respond, Dave had stepped up closer to her, taking out a knife as he did so, and using his free hand to grasp hold of her long hair – twisting it up in a painful fashion as he made his hand into a fist. "You thought _wrong_, you filthy little _bitch_. You won't have _nothing_ after tonight."

The sound of the gunshot that came next rang out loud and clear. From the other end of the room, Fred Ford had cocked and pulled the trigger of his weapon. But when the shot missed Dave though, the straggler let go of Caroleyn's hair at once, dropping her to the floor, hard. Though she'd landed wrong on her ankle during the drop, and had therefore twisted it, the new wife and mother struggled to clamber to hold onto the edge of the kitchen counter. She'd pulled herself up just in time to watch as Dave stabbed her husband right in the chest – not once, but twice. Immediately afterward, a stunned looking Fred aimed his gun and shot once again, this time fatally wounding the intruder in the gut in the proccess.

As far as Caroleyn was concerned, it was much too late to matter. Remaining stood - just barely able to thanks to the support of the counter's edge - she remained stationery, in a full-on state of shock for several moments, not even responding to the sound of her own infant daughter screaming for her in the next room over.

It wasn't until Fred's family finally _did_ arrive (by way of entering into the home by way of the already opened door) did Caroleyn snap from her state of shock at all. No longer staring silently, she then took to shaking and crying, screaming louder than her own daughter's cries. Authorities were called, crime scene tape was put up – investigations and the like were underwent and, in the end, all that Caroleyn felt she was left with was her daughter and a sense of _one _certainty: _no one_ would _ever_ harm her child; _no – matter – what._

After a haircut, dye job, and move from one state to another with her precious little Katrina, Caroleyn (now going under the name of Carole L. Ford, R.N.) worked as a nurse for quite a long while until she faced both hour and pay cuts at work. To suffice for the way of life she had been thus far (and had always planned to continue to) provide Katrina with, she returned to an old habit of selling medicine on the side.

True to her past crimes as well, she was eventually caught and arrested, though this time bail _was_ put up for her – by her late husband's mother. Katherine Ford was not proud of what her daughter-in-law had done, but she had understood the reasoning behind needing to provide little Katrina with the best she could be given.

Katherine had taken custody of her granddaughter while Carole got her life back together (even if it did include a second arrest and stint of time in jail), and in the end, she returned Katrina to her mother once she proved herself to be able to provide a stable (and legal) life for herself and her daughter by way of becoming a stock broker. It was around this time that Carole also met a man by the name of Elan Stohnam, who had a daughter about ten years younger than her own little girl.

As it was now, on the sidewalk by the busted-out window of the boutique on Main Street, Caroleyn Marcia Lemieux-Ford-Stohnam had just shot her very own step-daughter in the stomach. With some sense of regret and sorrow immediately striking her the second she did it, the woman then did something no one present had quite expected her to do: she dropped the gun to the sidewalk, before loosening the hold she'd had around the scared-to-death looking Seph.

As any number of police officers, of varying ranks and precincts rushed to crowd in around the now-unarmed woman, one badge-carrier remained off to the side, knelt to the ground with the head of a glaze-eyed girl lying, resting upon his lap.

"I liked you because you were so _different_, but so the _same_," Gabrielle was saying to Reid, managing a faint smile, even as the blood in her lower abdomen continued to spread. "I know you know I'm not a good person. I'm okay with you knowing that I'm not a good person because . . . even if _you're_ a good person, you and me – we're still made from the same thread. We just . . . split at different ends, you know? You, you split for the better – me? I split for the worst. . ."

"Gabe, don't say that. Gabe, you're – you're going to be alright," Reid said to her, himself growing pale as his stomach twisted in a sickening way while he looked down at her.

Placing a hand at her forehead, he pushed her hair back out of her eyes, saying, "Come on, just – just try to hold on a little longer. Ambulances are on the way."

"Why do you want me to be – what – spared, Spence?" Gabe asked him in a faint, starting-to-drawl sort of voice. "Like I said, we both know I'm not a good person."

"Anyone can change . . ." he said to her quietly, keeping a hand at her forehead, the other covered over her bullet wound. "Like you said – we're – well, we get it, you and me – we get the point in the same way, in the way others don't get it; for good or bad, it's still so different to find someone else that's able to _really_ get and understand what you mean in the same way that you yourself do."

"Well, again . . . that's why I liked you so much in the first place, Spence . . ." Gabe said, still smiling faintly as her eyes slowly rolled back into her head.

"_Gabrielle_!"

Looking up and over as Seph bolted across the otherwise blocked-off street, Spencer Reid kept his hands on Gabe's forehead and stomach, not moving her as he watched likely the only true friend this kid had ever had drop to his knees beside her motionless body, his eyes wide and panic-stricken.

"Do something!" Seph shrieked at Reid, who could only look back at the seventeen year old and give him an apologetic stare.

Back on the other side of the street, Prentiss had Carole's hands affixed behind her back, handcuffed. She'd just read the woman her Miranda Rights, and was about to turn her about to get her to a police car when a voice called out to her from back across the other side of the road.

"Why'd you _do it_?" Seph shouted at her, tears now stinging in both his eyes and throat.

Not answering him, Carole remained silent and simply let Prentiss lead her on toward the police car, knowing in her own mind her own reasons for doing what she'd done. As her head was ducked downward so that it wouldn't strike the roof of the cruiser, she replayed in her memory a phone conversation she'd had earlier that same day:

"_Yes, Mrs. Stohnam – this is Agent Emily Prentiss. I'm with the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Your step-daughter – Gabrielle – she was in to speak with me just earlier. She seems to think that your daughter, Katrina Ford, might be - in some way - connected with the recent string of murders of former high school dropouts. . ."_

Of course, as Carole would later calmly – practically _gladly_ testify to – it had been her doing the killings all along. Each case had a reason – each former highschooler had tried to do-in her Katrina in some way or another. Not a single murder had been for nothing, not even up until the very end; In her twisted mind, at least, this was the case.

Elan Stohnam, having seen things _very_ differently, of course, felt no need to even try to pretend to be normal without his daughter in his life anymore, and had thusly packed up and moved to some obscure place where he wished never to be found. Katrina Ford, on the other hand, took every opportunity to visit her mother behind bars, when not otherwise pursuing a career in the business of Wall Street.

Seph, on the other hand, seemed to be the one somehow most blatantly affected by all that had happened, and had been the very first to sign up for his high school's criminal profiling class, even if he was a senior, and only got to complete one half a semester of it before graduation. He'd had a one-on-one talk with Spencer Reid in the days after the passing of Gabrielle Stohnam. He didn't like to often think about the particulars of the discussion they'd had together, but he did often dwell on the general gist of the message that he'd taken from it.

People were clay – ready and waiting to be molded by the slightest things imaginable. If Seph had any say in how someone was to be molded for the better, then that's what he'd dedicate his life to.

If only he'd realized all this sooner, then maybe he could have saved the best friend he'd ever had from the mad world they all lived in.


End file.
